8 February 2019 - Procurement's important role in healthcare decision making has encouraged criticism and calls for greater collaboration with health technology assessment, and necessitates detailed analysis of how procurement approaches the decision task.

Miller et al. reviewed tender documents that solicit medical technologies for patient care in Canada, focusing on request for proposal (RFP) tenders that assess quality and cost, supplemented by a census of all tender types. We extracted data to assess (i) use of group purchasing organisations (GPOs) as buyers, (ii) evaluation criteria and rubrics, and (iii) contract terms, as indicators of supplier type and market conditions.

GPOs were dominant buyers for RFPs (54/97) and all tender types (120/226), and RFPs were the most common tender (92/226), with few price-only tenders (11/226). Evaluation criteria for quality were technical, including clinical or material specifications, as well as vendor experience and qualifications; “total cost” was frequently referenced (83/97), but inconsistently used.

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